Jute project to scrutinise production estimates

West Bengal government has engaged a central agency - Indian Agricultural Statistics Research Institute (IASRI) for a project on causes of divergence in estimates of jute production between agencies.
"A meeting has been called on July 27 at the state secretariat, Nabanna with the stakeholders and a team of IASRI," state Agricultural department sources told PTI.
"The divergence in production is even to the tune of 40-50 per cent. The main objective of the project is to identify factors responsible for divergence between production estimates of jute crop released by the Department of Economics and Statistics and Jute Advisory Board," sources said.

The project will be cover West Bengal, Assam and Bihar. The districts identified in West Bengal are Murshidabad, Nadia, North 24 Parganas and Coochbehar.
Jute industry players said production estimates are very crucial element as based on the same policies are frames of quantum of jute packaging material that government will buy, minimum support price is also announced.
Jute being a major crop and lakhs of farmers and mill workers are dependent in West Bengal.
The Indian Agricultural Statistics Research Institute is an institute under the Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR) with the mandate for developing new techniques for the design of agricultural experiments as well as to analyse data in agriculture.